August tends to be a quiet month on the news front. Most news-generating things are taking time off, like the Government, families etc. They’re all on holiday. But this August has been a little different. The saga with Entu has reached a climax it seems. It has kept many of us glued to screens to see what happens next.
I am very happy to say that on August 23rd this website smashed it’s all-time records for page views, visitors and unique visitors in a single day. And it was the Synseal post with regards to it’s new finance deal that helped me smash my daily record. In case you haven’t read it already, you can click here to catch up on the news.
These are the stats that matter.
All major metrics records
These were my previous daily highs:
Previous visitors record: 1144 – February 11th 2016
Previous unique visitors record: 1062 – February 11th 2016
Previous page views record: 1811 – October 8th 2014
These are records that have stood for a little while. The page views record goes back nearly three years. So it was going to be a big ask to break even one of these records, never mind all three in a single day.
But it was the Synseal story that really give DGB a traffic push on Wednesday of this week. In retrospect, it probably shouldn’t have been a surprise. Synseal is one of the biggest companies in our sector, and the rumour mill was going into hyper-drive. Up to the writing of this post, the Synseal article on here has been read a total of 1283 times in less than three days.
These are the new records that were set, again all on the same day this week:
New visitors record: 1641
New unique visitors record: 1283
New page views record: 2104
As you can see, these records weren’t just nudged a bit higher, they were all well beaten. They have raised the bar, and it’s likely that either a very serious industry story like a buyout, an administration or something else along those lines of magnitude will ever get close to breaking these new records. A big thanks though to everyone who sent traffic my way that day!
On tracks for year-on-year gains
At the start of the year I set myself some fairly hefty targets for this calendar year for my major traffic metrics. My first goal is to surpass the traffic generated in 2016, and that is an absolute certainty. At current rates I should surpass 2016 traffic at some point in early November. From there, the aim will be to cash in on as much traffic as possible up to the end of the year to hopefully reach my overall 2017 goals.
2017 Goals:
170,000 visitors
120,000 unique visitors
225,000 page views
These are high goals based on 2016 traffic, but you get nowhere by taking things easy! As it stands at the moment and looking at my daily averages I am set to surpass my visitors goal by around 4000 visitors and I am due to hit the 225k pages views goal absolutely on the nose right now. At the moment I am about 1.6% behind on my unique visitors in comparison to the year before. It was at 5% not too long ago so I am quickly catching myself up on that particular traffic metric, and the current trend suggest that I will hit my unique visitors goal just about at the end of the year.
There are certain things which I am doing to help me in my site goals. My weekly email subscriber list grows daily, and currently stands at 1123 total subscribers. This always gives me a big traffic boost every Wednesday when it goes out to subscribers. I am also continuing to grow my Linkedin, Twitter and Facebook communities which is also helping to drive traffic. I am now well over 2000 Linkedin connections and approaching 10,000 Twitter followers. All of this, along with a focus on creating quality content every single time and boosting paid PR publication helps to get me to my goals.
Some question why I focus so much on my stats. I admit that I do get a tad obsessive about stats on DGB. But, stats are the single best way to track the progress of a website, or any type of business. Stats show you where your growth is coming from, what articles are being read, which ones aren’t. You can identify on areas to improve on and things which you can boost further to create even more growth. Stats tell the story of this website from when it was just starting out to where it stands right now. You can’t do it any other way.
We’re still in a pretty turbulent time in the industry right now, with the fortunes of battered Entu the focus of the industry eye right now, even though some other media outlets aren’t reporting on it. I suspect that early next week we will be hit with another trading update from KPMG and Entu. This is one to watch as if the company, as already warned, goes into administration, this is going to have serious ripples across many parts of the industry.
There’s going to be plenty more to report on in the coming days and weeks!
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